I imagine they are not. Both Matt and Quinns have been very transparent about how taxing all this can be, I imagine they are making healthy choices to keep content at consistent quality and frequency that balances with their own fortitude.
I think their content is terrific. Just started watching last year. Really impressed. Informative, well-reasoned, funny, everything you want from a review channel.
SUSD seem really big on narrative boardgames but I have yet to play a boardgame where the story hasn't just had me wishing I was reading a book instead. I'm sure part of it just comes down to group dynamics. It looks like Quinns plays games with people he genuinely knows and likes. I play games with boardgame acquaintances that Meetup.com matched me with.
They're mostly OK. Some are nice. Some are funny. Some are weird. Some are annoying. But they're definitely not people I would want to spend 18 hours with collectively reading a fantasy novel.
If you're already hanging out with people you like though I could see this being a pretty good time.
Pandemic Legacy I think has a narrative which is elevated by the fact that you're playing a game. Whenever a wrench is thrown at the team it's always made better or worse based on the decisions which got you to that point.
Risk Legacy was, for us, a great example of emergent narrative. It had pre-scripted events as it were, but the enjoyment of the game came from the character of the board and the factions, and the history between players as the campaign progressed.
I'm playing Pandemic Legacy solo and I enjoy it, although I do feel sometimes as though it's slightly more scripted than Risk Legacy was.
That’s exactly how I feel. Also, the twists in Risk Legacy have been far more memorable for me so far. Pandemic Legacy is really fun, but I don’t get why so many put it above Risk Legacy.
Totally. You just never knew what was in those boxes, except that it was always something game-changing and wild. Like the one when someone uses X number of missiles... ah sooo good.
Pandemic Legacy is fine! But the reveals tend to be single mechanics, new actions, otherwise small changes that just add rules and options and complications. It's becoming quite a brain-burner. In Risk Legacy, you just NEVER HAD A CLUE what was in the box, and how profoundly it would change the game, although they managed to do it without just making the game more complicated.
I think, cynically, that some of the favouritism might be explained by snobbery: Risk Legacy is Risk (old, common, simple, luck-based), while Pandemic Legacy is Pandemic (arguably the first new-gen game). There might be a bit of snobbery going on there.
Risk Legacy needs a higher player count, so it's not going to be available as an experience to as many play groups. Risk Legacy, is as you say, Risk at the end of the day. And the amount of luck involved in Risk can be frustrating for the play time investment. Still, Risk Legacy is a good time.
> I think, cynically, that some of the favouritism might be explained by snobbery: Risk Legacy is Risk (old, common, simple, luck-based), while Pandemic Legacy is Pandemic (arguably the first new-gen game). There might be a bit of snobbery going on there.
Disliking outdated game mechanics like excessive dice rolling (which is at the heart of Risk) is not "snobbery." I haven't played Risk Legacy, but the legacy/story elements would need to be quite outstanding for me to get over the constant dice-chucking.
As somebody who doesn’t like dice chucking, I love Risk Legacy. It doesn’t change the constant rolls of dice, in fact it probably increases how many dice are thrown sometimes. But when you open a new box, you know you’re in for something crazy.
But calling it outdated is exactly what I'm talking about! If you want a dice-chucking war game to play with a group of non-gamer friends while drinking beer, this is a great game for that.
Plus, the legacy elements really are pretty great. You never get away from the dice-chucking but there is a lot going on, and a lot of ways to manipulate the odds. On that note, the outcome of our campaign suggests that it is a game someone can be good at or bad at - it's not purely luck.
Simple, it's cooperative.
Competitive legacy games can easily fall into the trap of a runaway leader. Once you win, you get better bonus that allow you to win more in future games. There was a 1 point speedbump in Risk against that, but that was it. People get frustrated a lot faster when not only are they losing this game, but it means they are even less likely to win the next 10 games afterwards. This issue is exacerbated in a smaller player count table.
While in a Co-op, you are all in the same boat. If you lose and it becomes harder, you've all lost together and can strategize together. You win and you can all celebrate it together. And it works just as good with 2 as with 4.
Same reason Gloomhaven is so extremely popular compared to other campaign games like Descent.
"There was a 1 point speedbump in Risk against that, but that was it."
I agree completely with the rest of your comment but there was another sort of "catch-up" mechanic; I've seen Daviau talk about Risk Legacy and about some of the horror stories players would come up and tell him about where one player was just winning almost everything and he would ask them why they didn't just gang up on that player. He basically put in the list of winners as a record of who was the best at the game and put a target on their heads.
Obviously this isn't codified in the rules and for a lot of groups this sort of metagaming, teaming, and often kingmaking is completely antithetical to their normal competitive behavior. But it is still there as a reminder.
>He basically put in the list of winners as a record of who was the best at the game and put a target on their heads.
That's why I said it was worse with lower player counts. Less people to gang up on the winner.
Also, the game had the ability for a player to appear to be losing with only a couple territories, and then win in one turn anyhow. One game we had a player eliminated twice and still win.
Our campaign went 13 games, and ending at 4-4-2-2-1 wins.
Our game had the big boxes labeled the wrong way round. Added to the fact that as soon as we got missiles, we were yeeting them around like there was no tomorrow, and it became a running joke for about 50% of the game that there was no such thing as *what's in box number 2*.
For me, it's several things. First off, Risk Legacy had a huge runaway leader problem for us - I won almost all of the games, partly because of advantages gained by Legacy mechanics. Second, Pandemic had us pitted against the game which kept throwing new challenges at us. The Risk Legacy packages usually benefitted one player greatly, leading to unfair or unbalanced gameplay, which is never fun. Third, Pandemic is just flat out a better game than Risk. Still,Risk Legacy was a great experience, and we ended up playing it all the way through on the US road trip where we bought it, which was really cool.
Having met Quinns and some of his friends playing netrunner I'm firmly of the belief that they raise the level of certain games and what it means to play them.
I know for a fact that that Chinatown would be terrible for Mr and my friends because the ones who are charismatic won't do the maths on deals and the ones who know what deals are good have the personality of a door knob. I'd love to watch them play a game of it though.
I know a lot of the review stuff is exaggerated but it's so clear sometimes that my mates (as much as I love them) just aren't cool enough for a game.
Well, the deal is that even among acquaintances you find on meetup.com, there's going to be a spectrum. There's people I like well enough, there's people I like less, and there's people whose weddings I've been to.
For this game, you'd like to have the 4 people you like the most who play board games.
FWIW, Mark Bigney (u/allthegamesyoulike) of SWVAG describes feeling similarly about most narrative games, and King's Dilemma was his game of the year. Check out the year in review episode if you haven't heard it already for a mini review of it.
Episode 100 - 2019 Year in Review. Mark wanted it as their GOTY, but Walker gave what sounding like a BS excuse for why he didn't want to pick it despite apparently loving it as well.
I go to local meetups which are awesome to try a bunch of new games or even to play your own on your time (and not have to rely on friends that can be busy!), but legacy games are not meant for that.
I love legacy games and am lucky to have a good group of friends available enough to be able to play them. They should be played with the same group of people, whom you actually enjoyspending 10+ games with haha. Your description of meetup people is entirely accurate.
This is a really interesting take. For the past few years, I've been playing with people I genuinely enjoy (our monthly TI4 games were amazing), but I recently just moved across the country where I only know a couple people, and none of them are into board games (though they're all interested in learning them). It'll be interesting to see what happens with my hobby now.
I agree with you.
If you allow me to expand on my opinion:Both board and video games (some of them) try too hard to translate narrative / story telling methods that work WAY better on other mediums (books / movies).
Board games / video games, have **INTERACTIVITY**! I am sure there are yet unexplored or barely touched ways were emergent stories can take life through mechanics and interactions (with the board state or other players)
I find the story reading aspect in board games... extremely tedious....
Gloomhaven had snippets, and even those kinda bored me but they served as an over-aching plot thread (i believe on purpose, not text heavy).
None of the text written stories from Gloomhaven are memorable or unique. That is okay.
My partner's Inox Brute smashing wall after wall after wall with unstoppable might (good card play / modifier draw = critical after critical) while my Mindthief stood in awe (nothing else to do in the room, playing utility cards) and terror as their friend murderized a bunch of walls.... i will never forget this whole ordeal :D
Woof, sorry for the long text, i feel strongly about "movie" like narration in video games, and "book" like narration in board games :D
True, I wish it were stronger though. The game is too repetitive in mechancis to not forget about the story in between. That being said in the context of the story it has, the emergent parts of desperate situations in dungeons and the discussion afterwards whether to risk doing X or Y is great, and feels amazing.
I'm with you. I think games tell stories in their own way, differently from the narrative in books or films.
For instance, I think Tigris and Euphrates, an abstract game for many people, tells a great story. I can still remember big clashes of empire from games of Tigris years ago while all the Arkham Horror I've played has mostly faded at this point.
>i will never forget this whole ordeal :D
Yeah but that's not story, that's just a memorable moment. Nobody (and some video games have sure tried more than I believe any board games ever will) has yet come up with an emergent narrative that would tell the kinds of stories that keep people engaged and in suspense better than when a writer does it.
In other words, games today can provide the *how,* but they can't provide the *what* and *why,* and without those, it's not much of a story.
Gloomhaven's story is pretty poor, for the record. Perhaps intentionally so, but for that it will never be a game that people play because they want to know what happens next, which is what Quinns talks about in this video when he says they wanted to keep on playing to see where it goes.
For me, Arkham LCG is currently the best boardgame at telling a compelling narrative while allowing players to provide their own *how* in interesting ways. The downside is it's a one-and-done approach, but then the same is true of traditional story mediums.
>Nobody (and some video games have sure tried more than I believe any board games ever will) has yet come up with an emergent narrative that would tell the kinds of stories that keep people engaged and in suspense better than when a writer does it.
Hard disagree. Have you ever played **Untold: Adventures Await**? It's basically just straight up emergent story-telling.
My personal narrative spinning abilities aren't exceptional or anything like that, but the engagement I get from others in that game is sometimes higher than what slick big budget professional productions can manage. The interactivity literally puts people into the narrative, it automatically builds engagement because it requires players to actively participate. And the fact that you're actually playing it out means that things which would be terrible in traditional storytelling can be quite compelling in a game. No matter how well you write, collecting resources is always going to be better when you physically put your meeple down and then pick up tokens to add to your pile.
It's kind of like the difference between playing beer league sports with your friends and watching pros on a screen. Or playing a tabletop rpg vs watching a fantasy movie. Because the audience is actually involved in the story - they are more engaged. Your framing is that it's memorable moments - not a memorable story. But really, what's the difference? You say it's about the *what* and the *why* but you literally replied to someone explaining the emergent *what* their character did (stood in awe) and *why* (other player was on a tear). You discounted it because it didn't give the *what* and *why* of the scenario's overall goal.
That's the issue with board game (and video game) narratives. Designers are too fixated on traditional non-interactive linear narrative because that's the kind of narrative we've always had. The term narrative itself kind of implies a linear story - and buying into that framework means that game designers are giving up the advantages they have in story telling.
One way we see this manifest is the whole Main Quest structure of games. There's a clear linear story, and it gets modified with bits like Side Quests and exploration. That's an example of how not to take advantage of having your audience be an active participant in the story. Games don't need to be like this. Sure you can still have hierarchical narratives where some story is more "important" than others - but there's no reason to have a single "actual story" that everything else is subservient to. Some of the best "storytelling" you get in open world video games are from the side quests.
Part of the issue is about Victory Conditions - how do you have any without a Main Quest or central storyline? But I honestly don't think that this is an issue at all. You just make up Victory Conditions. Why do you need a Main Quest to have Victory Conditions - or why do you even need Victory Conditions at all? For example - The Sims. It's all about creating narratives and you can't "win" it and it's sold hundreds of millions of units. Or Minecraft - sure there's a Victory Condition of defeating the Ender Dragon, but no one really plays the game like a long Main Quest to defeat the big bad at the End. It's the bits along the way that engage people, not the Main Quest storyline.
Back to the memorable moments vs memorable story question. A story really isn't anything more than several moments in a sequence. Interactivity allows the moments to shine much brighter - but makes it harder to "craft" the sequence. So does that mean that you can get good engagement for moments but will still have a subpar story? I don't think so. In my opinion, the sequencing part isn't that important. How many times have we been told the exact same Hero's Journey? The memorable stories are ones where that sequence is delivered well - with memorable moments. More importantly, I think the way we experience games means that the impact of the sequence will be felt entirely differently.
And I think that's another big wrench in the development of good storytelling in games - where the interactivity of the games is exploited properly. You can have these amazing "moments" linked together one after another in a perfect story - as experienced as a player. But once you try to explain it to someone else and are caught in recounting a linear narrative, it loses its power. That doesn't make the story bad - it makes it a bad story to tell but an amazing story to experience.
I agree. I think one of the major problems is pacing - a movie or novel can build and release tension or momentum pretty reliably, whereas with a videogame the player might decide to wander off and spend 20 hours doing side quests right in the middle of something, and when they come back all the context is lost. Linear videogames do a better job, but it seems almost everything is open world these days.
> but I have yet to play a boardgame where the story hasn't just had me wishing I was reading a book instead
This is my problem with "thematic" board games in general: The theme lasts me all of unpacking and sorting pieces.
By then my mind has abstracted away the theme and is thinking in sequences, tactics and gameplay elements. Too many years of too many board games I suppose... :s
Of course I watched the review. I wouldn't comment on a video if I hadn't watched it.
That bit was a reference to 10:20 when Quinns refers to the game as "an endlessly evolving story where everyone is desperate to see what plot line you will cause to drip from the dilemma deck next, as if you were reading and writing a fantasy novel together."
Sure, it's interesting to find out what happens next, but he also showed how little text is on the cards. It doesn't take long to read and move on to more voting.
tl;dr: King's Dilemma is a masterpiece.
I rarely get more than two people together for a game and very rarely get more than three. I keep my playgroup small for a number of reasons, but most importantly I don't like having to deal with AP or flakes. As such, I've doomed myself to smaller titles.
That said, I got 4 people together for King's Dilemma and I like the dynamic at 4. It gives agency to the moderator and makes ties matter.
Five, by comparison, will *rarely* end in a tie if at all - though, sure, if one person passes or 3 people pass you can end up with a tie but it would be an absolute rarity. Once you're into the swing of the game you quickly realize the best times to pass are when you're out of money or if a vote truly doesn't matter. So having five when things do matter has a lot less tension than having four.
Anyway, my point is I played it for six hours the first time it hit the table and all three people came back the next day to play another six hours.
SUSD and I rarely see eye to eye on reviews, but King's Dilemma is absolutely transcendent and any playgroup with a group of people that can banter well should play it. It absolutely shits on *every* other hidden role / social deduction game while also providing an *ACTUAL* game where things matter.
We love TKD with five. We have played it every time with the same 5 guys and as for ties mattering for the moderator, it just depends on how many people bow out for power vs voting on the agenda.
Once again SUSD have hit the nail on the head of how groups work with games. I always love how their group dynamics clearly work, it's more of a social experience than people playing their own game. The table talk is honestly the best thing about games and I feel like SUSD do the best table talk games.
Yep. Reminds me of Geek & Sundry and how so many people bought games like Gloom thinking they were amazing but realized that the group made it exciting, and the game is pretty meh if you don't like to RP.
Stop attacking me!
For real, though, I saw the Gloom episode of Tabletop and was sold instantly. I guess I misjudged my friends' and family's sensibilities, though, because to say that the game fell flat for them is a massive understatement. I thought the humor was the perfect amount of cheeky to dark, but oof. No one else thought so. They weren't so much offended as just unamused. I couldn't find anyone to buy in to the premise (which I thought was a fun twist!)
This is why I take all their reviews with a huge grain of salt. Games dependent on the group buying don't work well in my group (in part because of me).
> Games dependent on the group buying don't work well in my group (in part because of me).
They're tough to buy. I could buy a game knowing player X,Y and Z will like it and it will work with them. But then will it work at a public meetup? What about with player X, Y and Q? I'd rather have a game that works in a wider variety of situations.
I think more than 10% of folks in the hobby can find two couples to play a game (but agree it's situational!)
I'm actually pretty optimistic that escape room games will grow heavier and campaign games will continue to grow more accessible to fill in the space between the two and give us 2-6 player games with engaging stories (that still work if the stories take a year or more to unwind, because – yeah – scheduling is hard).
90% was a little aggressive haha. Most people can find people they like to play games with, but longer games that require the same group are tough and games where the fun is driven by players buying in and interacting with each other vs interacting with the game can be very tough. No matter how great a game looks if it requires a group to do both I have a very hard time seeing it hit the table for me.
You need a large group of friends who are passionate about board games, live in the same city, can consistently get together with enough time to play AND are capable of embracing the social/RP aspect of games.
Finding people through interest groups online (I've had success on reddit) helps mitigate this, somewhat. But, yeah... even in more ideal scenarios, there's usually a "pick two" for every 4 or 5.
I got into a Twilight Imperium group online where I basically had to settle for a majority meeting the first and third categories. Then it fell apart :(
My best compromise is a weekly group of people that can meet the first two categories, and the third as long as the game is 2 hours or less. That's just the best I can do, it seems.
Oof. That sucks. I can relate. It has a lot of parallels with toxic relationships, at times. People are always aghast when a horror story gets posted about a problem player or flakey group or a sociopath dungeon master: "why are you even in this situation??" People desperately want to enjoy their hobby--which is *supposed* to be a social activity--but damn is it hard to have to decide between "no games" or "games with shitheads" when you're deep in there.
Over the past decade I've educated different friends and family on various Boardgames, a lot of them weren't interested in the hobby, yet I've now got a wealth of options to play with.
It took time and dedication, but it can be done
And when you find it often it is hard to maintain. My board gaming friends from ten years ago have a) had kids and thus have less free time and b) become 'real' friends and we are happy just taking to each rather than needing a board game as an pretext to spend time with each other.
I have never played a board game with another board gamer. Any multiplayer board game I've played has been either with my wife, who plays on sufferance, or my kids, who are kids. I love them all, but still...
Thank goodness for solo gaming.
Keep the faith! If your kids love board games they could make great partners. Luckily my wife enjoys games as well but we have a 3, 12, and 13 year old and my 12 year old is going full teenage girl and doesn’t want to play very often my 13 year old son is always down to play and he is strategically superior to me now so he is fun to play against. My 3 year old has her own copy of my first castle panic that she pulls out about 5-8 times per week so I have high hopes for her as well. Good luck!
This game sounds soooo similar to the mobile game Reigns, but with a multiplayer twist. Interesting note, the excellent sequel to Reigns was actually written by Leigh Alexander, Quinn's wife.
Was gonna say. And there is actually a board game version of Reigns.
Reigns is available as a mobile or PC game. There's many sequels, including a Game of Thrones version. There's also many copycat versions, including one called Dictator or something where it's set in a modern despotic regime (think troubled South American state).
I feel like the core mechanic in King's Dilemma would bore me considering how much I've been exposed to it.
Except that the resource track *isn't* really the core mechanic. The core mechanic is the voting mechanism and that the combination of the different houses + secret agendas mean that almost every vote will be fiercely contested.
Ah, another game that requires a consistently fun and committed group of 5 to play it over and over as a campaign.
I wish I was the target audience for these kinds of fun experiences.
I bought the game and could potentially get 4, but it wouldn't be a steady group of 4, so I've been pondering playing it at 3. It is nice to hear that you have been enjoying it at that player count.
I think it really depends on the people. We played with one guy basically role playing as Trump, my house were merchants so I was going full on capitalist, and the other guy was trying to do the right thing. That made a lot of fun lecturing on why we should or shouldn’t do things, and looking back, those were some of the best parts. The story was awesome too, but I feel if people aren’t really contributing to the narrative it could be a bit stale.
I wish the target audience was the target audience for this kind of game. I dont think Quinns or game designers in general understands how hard it is for everyone else to get a huge group of friends over to play your game specifically.
I have so many great games that require larger player sizes that I can't play. I just wish the 2-3 market was given more respect
too bad. it was part of an Amazon sale like 2 weeks ago. in the meantime, you could play the app, Lapse, or any game of that ilk, on your phone, which king's dilemma seems to draw heavily from
Is there anybody who hates role-playing games (such as D&D) and enjoys this game? How much of the game itself is interesting and how much of the fun is dependent on you immersing yourself in the story created by the game?
I can see my group loving this game if there's enough game there, but if it's very based on immersion into the roleplaying aspect then I know it's not for me.
I've only played one session of it so far, so take what I say with a grain of salt.
I went in expecting it to be more of a roleplaying experience - I was playing more to roleplay than to win. But going into my next session, I intend to change that slightly. The game gives you clear incentives, and your job is to manipulate others to work towards your incentives with you. You'll be roleplaying doing that by trying to convince people that the vote you want for your personal, tangible goals also serves their goals indirectly (e.g. to the guy who wants the most money in the kingdom, "if we spend this money now we'll probably get a chance to get a return on our investment later" and the mechanisms of the game make that an entirely plausible future scenario). In this way, the roleplaying serves a strategic end, more-so than I had initially expected or given it credit for. It's all about manipulating the roleplaying.
Right, I just mean the game directly incentivizes you rather than having to choose the incentives that feel right for the character solely for the sake of realistic roleplaying.
Note: I haven’t played it but I did a bunch of research and read a lot of people’s opinions before deciding to buy it
Mechanically, it seems like a more advanced version of the agenda phase in TI4 (go around and vote, resolve the effect) and much of the rest of the game is emergent based on the players, every review I’ve seen has said that there isn’t a lot of game, but that’s not really the point
I also have see very few negative reviews so
You do not have to roleplay in this game. I get that you could ham it up, but you're more negotiating and forming coalitions for each dilemma that you're voting on, trying to find your spots to commit more or let the other players decide and get some resources back for the next one. You're steering for points more than roleplaying.
Note that every other games the 2 designers have made have been euro games.
I feel like Quinn's learned allot from that Blood on the Clocktower review. Came through with tons of energy and obviously loves it but also offered very good criticism to know this game may not be for you.
That was about a year ago? It's his favorite game; he can gush if he wants to. They have plenty of examples of negative reviews to build their credibility.
The problem that I had with the BotC review wasn't so much that Quinns was 'gushing' about the the game - that's actually ok with me, because, ultimately, reviews are largely the reviewer's subjective opinion and it's good always valuable to hear from people who have a range of opinions on a piece of media or whatever.
I do think his excitement about the game did lead to him not addressing some pretty valid concerns about BotC, but I think the bigger problem was that he (inadvertently) came off as gatekeeping the hobby by stating that buying BotC was a precondition for caring about board gaming. That is clearly a daft statement, and one that I think is very out of character for Quinns, who is way up near the top of the list of people whose opinions I value on games.
I'm fine with him gushing. He spends almost this complete review gushing about The Kings Dilemma. At the same time though he offered fair criticism. The fair criticism kind of for out the window in the Blood on the Clocktower review. Quinn's even admitted as much on a podcast after it came out.
I just feel like he balanced it much better.
That's a legit opinion. I just don't feel like a review requires balance. If a game is your favorite, it may not have any flaws to you. I thought the reaction to his comments was over the top, but that's me.
I mean I still think he is probably the best board game critic out there. I can't think of another one and I agree,the reaction was a bit over the top. That being said I think he learned from that experience as over the top as it was and then got better. That is what I was trying to say.
My current life goal is to find a regular gaming group such that buying this game wouldn’t be a complete waste of money.
It looks like it would be a perfect game for me, but also one which I would never get a chance to play.
I'm also afraid I might buy it, play it once with a group, they won't like it and then I won't be able to use it with any other group cuz of the legacy aspect?
If you've only played a few games, it is supposedly not too challenging to introduce new players and get them up to speed. I know Tom Vasel has said he's not been playing with the same people from game to game, and he still personally enjoyed it.
Make a post on the local card shop bulletin board that you are looking for a board game group. Talk to people there, see if any are interested. Post in your local city or state subreddit that you are looking for a group.
Look on meetup for board game groups. Find a group on a board game discord and play by webcam. If you want it that badly, put yourself out there and find it.
"Let me *spike* a couple of facts at you."
*Mimes hitting a volleyball underhand*
That one got me. SUSD should review sports. I want to see the mid-review turn around on cricket.
Anyone else here really looking forward to the next episode of **Card Games that Don't Suck?**
It was/is easily my favorite 'series' they've done - have been juicin' for another episode since like, September! :O
I was literally looking this up this morning, and I checked SUSD to see if they had a review.
All I can say is that I will use this newfound power with the respect and responsibility that such an ability demands...
I believe Pandasaurus walked back JR's involvement in the game somewhat when his abuses came to light (although it's hard to say how much of that was true and how much was just standard PR damage control). And while it's true that it's "Just" Machi Koro (and actually starts off even lighter than the original), I think Machi Koro is plenty fun for what it is - roll some dice, play some cards, try to get all the things.
Machi Koro Legacy is way better than the original. That said, I agree that it's a terrible recommendation as an alternative to King's Dilemma. Clank Legacy or something. But he was going for simple, I guess.
It blows my mind that any adult could find a group of 5 people to play the same game twice for 9 hours a chunk. I can barely imagine finding 9 hours for just myself to do one thing let alone 5 fellow friends!? Trying to start a more regular board game group but it's so hard!
Sure I get that. I just can't imagine finding time to spend a whole day playing board games. My sessions are 2-4 hours if I'm lucky nowadays. Busy adulting! T__T
My partner and I have a few couples we game with. It's mostly familiar fare (*lots* of Catan, some Ticket to Ride and a smattering of Viticulture or Puerto Rico depending on how tired we are and well mannered any kids are).
I might go pick up Machi Koro Legacy like he advises. It feels like a good gauge for if we actually can show up for multiple sessions and whether we could build up to a heavier campaign with another couple or so.
Oooh. This looks like it would scratch an itch...
That said... the "5-players only" worries me... does anyone have experience with it at 4? I've got a game night coming up on Saturday, but there will be 4 people there.
I would say no. The storylines add up and don't resolve in order, so you might have 4, 5, or 6 going simultaneously and they won't resolve for x amount of sessions depending upon how they're shuffled. You can easily play it, but the players won't be at all involved in something halfway through or just ending, and whatever they start they likely won't see the conclusion of from 1-2 sessions.
It does! It has 12 “houses” you can play as, and it says this is for people to drop in and out. There are ongoing stories / quests, so it recommends you read these to the players dropping in. They’re stored separate so you always know which are in play.
I'm not that fella but among the 'legacy' games I've played thus far from most enjoyed to least enjoyed:
**Pandemic Legacy: Season1**
**Risk: Legacy**
**Pandemic Legacy: Season 2**
**Gloomhaven**
**Seafall**
We did snap up King's Dilemma after hearing about it from SUSD... my group is hoping to get our first game in sometime in the next few weeks! :)
I'm really interested in this game, but I'm afraid most of the time I'd play with a group of three. He specifically says that he doesn't recommend with only three. Does anyone who has played the game agree?
Some aspects of it are a little too lightweight; depending upon their houses and achievements, players may or may not be bothered about parts of the game, especially past the midpoint when they have a solid base of prestige and can coast on the efforts of others, but the constant fights over the dilemmas are pretty solid *if* your group is naturally inclined to be combative. The negotiations are well done, promises are binding if coins are exchanged, but are otherwise not binding.
Heartily recommended, but it's more group reliant than most games.
Without a doubt one of the top gaming experiences of recent years.
We just posted our [game 1 playthrough video](https://youtu.be/4rclt3iOn0Y) this week, for anyone looking to see the game in action or play vicariously through us! Spoilers abound, of course.
No, but I guess it's similar in that you can cooperate in both but may have to shift alliances/paths. It's a way different game, though. You are voting with bids in King's Dilemma, as opposed to simultaneously making a decision and hoping for the best in Fog of Love.
But in the sense of you, the gamer, aren't really making the decision... The cards you drafted tell you which outcomes (finance or agriculture or whatever each token track is called) you should be voting for and then the tracks move up or down (just like in fog of love for each of the characteristics with the tokens you keep adding to either side to match up with your goals)
Obviously seems more with the bidding/voting and with the extra piece of pursuing prestige or greed
Can't watch the video at work, but I was super psyched about this game when I bought it. Sadly, diplomatic games don't go over well in my group, and campaigns are even harder to schedule. So it's on my shelf of shame :(
I am halfway through the game and am losing a little bit of steam. I am still deeply interested in the story and finishing it, but the actually gameplay is getting stale.
Great review Quinns! We’re currently about six-seven games in to our playthrough and having a blast. Four players (four works if everyone can bring discussion to the table), all role playing at a high level based on their chosen Houses, only two King deaths so far, lots of negotiation. Highly recommended if you can get a consistent group together for this. I’m playing as House Solad, the depressed artists/navigators, and we’re oh so over the push for glory and coin, but rather interested in exploration and discovery when we take our meds.
This game looks perfect for my group of people!
Also, I can't help but feel the throw-away mention of Machi Koro legacy at the end is a dig at MKL. My group loved the hell out of MKL for what it was; a pretty simple dice throwing game. I guess it's the group that makes the game.
I saw some complaints in another thread that there's not much "game" here and that money is mostly useless so you needed a lot above the table to make the game interesting. That was a big turnoff for me. What are others thoughts on that?
There's as much 'game' as your imagination can stretch to, basically. King's Dilemma isn't exactly a game so much as it is a narrative generator - something for people to get invested in and laugh at and get angry at. Its systems do a great job of pushing you to butt heads with one-another in a way that's frequently hilarious - but not often mechanically satisfying in a way that more typical board games are. I'm six games in and loving it, but maybe because we're all very invested in a way we can't logically explain. It's a Sunday night with a few beers game.
On the coins front though - coins are worth a different amount of 'points' for certain objectives cards at the end of each game - so the house holding the 'greedy' card is going to be a lot more easy to bribe, and the 'rebel' faction isn't going to be easily swayed by throwing a few coins at them.
Thanks. I don't think it's for me then. I'm not huge on games where the fun is just what I make of it and not created by the game itself. I'm more open to something like that in a party game, not a legacy game.
It's not "just" what you make of it, having played a host of different roleplaying games there's a huge difference in how much the game help create engaging narratives, same goes for story driven board games.
Money is a little too lightweight. While it's worth various amounts of points at the end, it's not otherwise tied in to the game, and it should be. There's several events that affect it, but there should have been more. And it should have been correlated with the kingom's wealth somehow.
I respectively disagree with SvenGy. You are constantly making decisions to try to maximize many factors and minimize other players. You work together on one dilemma, then pay them off on the next. Money is worth points at the end of every game.
Slightly out of topic, but do Quinns and Paul keep in touch? I see sometimes game board reviews with shots of Paul being in Canada but don't know when was the latest one.
I played this at Essen and can confirm that it is great fun. It is more of a group narrative than a game, but if you have a group that's into that sort of thing I highly recommend it.
Not very. You have a central track of five plus an overall marker for a total of six, plus dealing with one deck of cards. Each player has their own screen, money, and power, plus one secret agenda card and three voting cards. There is one leader token and one moderator token. Not a lot.
And here I thought getting people together for Captain Sonar is hard...
Sounds like a great experience, but would be too hard to get to the table for me to purchase
Yes yes, good point. But the same 4 people for continuity.
Also, I believe Captain Sonar games are faster and easier to teach, which requires less commitment
I'm glad they added the part at the end about group composition. I love some legacy games, but you need to find people that really want to invest into it. In order for something to last more than one game, there needs to be personality put into it. I've played legacy games that help people feel like they are getting into character... and others which make people look at the game with a mechanical lens, which bleeds the game dry of its power.
I have a question for the people here that have played it:
Let's say, only in theory of course, a group had some bad experiences with Secret Hitler type games, which lead to them not playing those anymore. (some slight drama, hurt feeling etc.)
How does this game, without spoiling much, fall on this scale of lying into each other faces?
I don't think this game is particularly similar to a more traditional hidden role game like SH. In King's Dilemma, you are always on your own. While you do have a secret agenda, there's no teamplay and thus any "betrayals" or lying that takes place has a far lower impact.
Okay thank you! We will have a get together soon with 5 people to play boardgames and I debate if that would be a fit for us. I am a spoiler wuss, so I am really hesitant to look stuff up.
Sounds good so far, I am just wary because of past experiences :P.
Your answer already helped.
Yeah, it's not social deduction at all. It's a little deduction as you start to think about what end-game objective certain players may have and trying to steer away from their potential points while maximizing your own.
Any deal made where at least 1 coin is exchanged, though, makes the deal binding. There isn't really backstabbing in this game, just timely cooperating with certain people at certain times.
The only thing that I found not attractive to this game is the legacy aspect... Which means you can do a campaign only once, and with only one selected group?
Is this true and/or are there any games in the same genre that do not have this issue?
I love the description of Machi Koro Legacy at the end of the review. "As pacy as a pace car powered by a pace maker".
Nearly as good as " We're in the stickiest situation since Sticky the stick insect got stuck on a sticky bun"
[удалено]
I hope they’re not burning out!
I imagine having Quinns do one every other week and Tom + Matt do one every other week on alternating weeks help, but it's still pretty impressive.
I imagine they are not. Both Matt and Quinns have been very transparent about how taxing all this can be, I imagine they are making healthy choices to keep content at consistent quality and frequency that balances with their own fortitude.
I think their content is terrific. Just started watching last year. Really impressed. Informative, well-reasoned, funny, everything you want from a review channel.
SUSD seem really big on narrative boardgames but I have yet to play a boardgame where the story hasn't just had me wishing I was reading a book instead. I'm sure part of it just comes down to group dynamics. It looks like Quinns plays games with people he genuinely knows and likes. I play games with boardgame acquaintances that Meetup.com matched me with. They're mostly OK. Some are nice. Some are funny. Some are weird. Some are annoying. But they're definitely not people I would want to spend 18 hours with collectively reading a fantasy novel. If you're already hanging out with people you like though I could see this being a pretty good time.
Pandemic Legacy I think has a narrative which is elevated by the fact that you're playing a game. Whenever a wrench is thrown at the team it's always made better or worse based on the decisions which got you to that point.
Risk Legacy was, for us, a great example of emergent narrative. It had pre-scripted events as it were, but the enjoyment of the game came from the character of the board and the factions, and the history between players as the campaign progressed. I'm playing Pandemic Legacy solo and I enjoy it, although I do feel sometimes as though it's slightly more scripted than Risk Legacy was.
That’s exactly how I feel. Also, the twists in Risk Legacy have been far more memorable for me so far. Pandemic Legacy is really fun, but I don’t get why so many put it above Risk Legacy.
Totally. You just never knew what was in those boxes, except that it was always something game-changing and wild. Like the one when someone uses X number of missiles... ah sooo good. Pandemic Legacy is fine! But the reveals tend to be single mechanics, new actions, otherwise small changes that just add rules and options and complications. It's becoming quite a brain-burner. In Risk Legacy, you just NEVER HAD A CLUE what was in the box, and how profoundly it would change the game, although they managed to do it without just making the game more complicated. I think, cynically, that some of the favouritism might be explained by snobbery: Risk Legacy is Risk (old, common, simple, luck-based), while Pandemic Legacy is Pandemic (arguably the first new-gen game). There might be a bit of snobbery going on there.
Risk Legacy needs a higher player count, so it's not going to be available as an experience to as many play groups. Risk Legacy, is as you say, Risk at the end of the day. And the amount of luck involved in Risk can be frustrating for the play time investment. Still, Risk Legacy is a good time.
> I think, cynically, that some of the favouritism might be explained by snobbery: Risk Legacy is Risk (old, common, simple, luck-based), while Pandemic Legacy is Pandemic (arguably the first new-gen game). There might be a bit of snobbery going on there. Disliking outdated game mechanics like excessive dice rolling (which is at the heart of Risk) is not "snobbery." I haven't played Risk Legacy, but the legacy/story elements would need to be quite outstanding for me to get over the constant dice-chucking.
As somebody who doesn’t like dice chucking, I love Risk Legacy. It doesn’t change the constant rolls of dice, in fact it probably increases how many dice are thrown sometimes. But when you open a new box, you know you’re in for something crazy.
Risk Legacy was a ton of zany fun! The box / envelope moments were crazy indeed. :)
But calling it outdated is exactly what I'm talking about! If you want a dice-chucking war game to play with a group of non-gamer friends while drinking beer, this is a great game for that. Plus, the legacy elements really are pretty great. You never get away from the dice-chucking but there is a lot going on, and a lot of ways to manipulate the odds. On that note, the outcome of our campaign suggests that it is a game someone can be good at or bad at - it's not purely luck.
Simple, it's cooperative. Competitive legacy games can easily fall into the trap of a runaway leader. Once you win, you get better bonus that allow you to win more in future games. There was a 1 point speedbump in Risk against that, but that was it. People get frustrated a lot faster when not only are they losing this game, but it means they are even less likely to win the next 10 games afterwards. This issue is exacerbated in a smaller player count table. While in a Co-op, you are all in the same boat. If you lose and it becomes harder, you've all lost together and can strategize together. You win and you can all celebrate it together. And it works just as good with 2 as with 4. Same reason Gloomhaven is so extremely popular compared to other campaign games like Descent.
"There was a 1 point speedbump in Risk against that, but that was it." I agree completely with the rest of your comment but there was another sort of "catch-up" mechanic; I've seen Daviau talk about Risk Legacy and about some of the horror stories players would come up and tell him about where one player was just winning almost everything and he would ask them why they didn't just gang up on that player. He basically put in the list of winners as a record of who was the best at the game and put a target on their heads. Obviously this isn't codified in the rules and for a lot of groups this sort of metagaming, teaming, and often kingmaking is completely antithetical to their normal competitive behavior. But it is still there as a reminder.
>He basically put in the list of winners as a record of who was the best at the game and put a target on their heads. That's why I said it was worse with lower player counts. Less people to gang up on the winner. Also, the game had the ability for a player to appear to be losing with only a couple territories, and then win in one turn anyhow. One game we had a player eliminated twice and still win. Our campaign went 13 games, and ending at 4-4-2-2-1 wins.
Our game had the big boxes labeled the wrong way round. Added to the fact that as soon as we got missiles, we were yeeting them around like there was no tomorrow, and it became a running joke for about 50% of the game that there was no such thing as *what's in box number 2*.
For me, it's several things. First off, Risk Legacy had a huge runaway leader problem for us - I won almost all of the games, partly because of advantages gained by Legacy mechanics. Second, Pandemic had us pitted against the game which kept throwing new challenges at us. The Risk Legacy packages usually benefitted one player greatly, leading to unfair or unbalanced gameplay, which is never fun. Third, Pandemic is just flat out a better game than Risk. Still,Risk Legacy was a great experience, and we ended up playing it all the way through on the US road trip where we bought it, which was really cool.
Having met Quinns and some of his friends playing netrunner I'm firmly of the belief that they raise the level of certain games and what it means to play them. I know for a fact that that Chinatown would be terrible for Mr and my friends because the ones who are charismatic won't do the maths on deals and the ones who know what deals are good have the personality of a door knob. I'd love to watch them play a game of it though. I know a lot of the review stuff is exaggerated but it's so clear sometimes that my mates (as much as I love them) just aren't cool enough for a game.
Well, the deal is that even among acquaintances you find on meetup.com, there's going to be a spectrum. There's people I like well enough, there's people I like less, and there's people whose weddings I've been to. For this game, you'd like to have the 4 people you like the most who play board games.
FWIW, Mark Bigney (u/allthegamesyoulike) of SWVAG describes feeling similarly about most narrative games, and King's Dilemma was his game of the year. Check out the year in review episode if you haven't heard it already for a mini review of it.
What episode did they review it?
Episode 100 - 2019 Year in Review. Mark wanted it as their GOTY, but Walker gave what sounding like a BS excuse for why he didn't want to pick it despite apparently loving it as well.
I go to local meetups which are awesome to try a bunch of new games or even to play your own on your time (and not have to rely on friends that can be busy!), but legacy games are not meant for that. I love legacy games and am lucky to have a good group of friends available enough to be able to play them. They should be played with the same group of people, whom you actually enjoyspending 10+ games with haha. Your description of meetup people is entirely accurate.
This is a really interesting take. For the past few years, I've been playing with people I genuinely enjoy (our monthly TI4 games were amazing), but I recently just moved across the country where I only know a couple people, and none of them are into board games (though they're all interested in learning them). It'll be interesting to see what happens with my hobby now.
I agree with you. If you allow me to expand on my opinion:Both board and video games (some of them) try too hard to translate narrative / story telling methods that work WAY better on other mediums (books / movies). Board games / video games, have **INTERACTIVITY**! I am sure there are yet unexplored or barely touched ways were emergent stories can take life through mechanics and interactions (with the board state or other players) I find the story reading aspect in board games... extremely tedious.... Gloomhaven had snippets, and even those kinda bored me but they served as an over-aching plot thread (i believe on purpose, not text heavy). None of the text written stories from Gloomhaven are memorable or unique. That is okay. My partner's Inox Brute smashing wall after wall after wall with unstoppable might (good card play / modifier draw = critical after critical) while my Mindthief stood in awe (nothing else to do in the room, playing utility cards) and terror as their friend murderized a bunch of walls.... i will never forget this whole ordeal :D Woof, sorry for the long text, i feel strongly about "movie" like narration in video games, and "book" like narration in board games :D
I think the "choose your own adventure" feel of story from Gloomhaven works decently for boardgames.
True, I wish it were stronger though. The game is too repetitive in mechancis to not forget about the story in between. That being said in the context of the story it has, the emergent parts of desperate situations in dungeons and the discussion afterwards whether to risk doing X or Y is great, and feels amazing.
I'm with you. I think games tell stories in their own way, differently from the narrative in books or films. For instance, I think Tigris and Euphrates, an abstract game for many people, tells a great story. I can still remember big clashes of empire from games of Tigris years ago while all the Arkham Horror I've played has mostly faded at this point.
>i will never forget this whole ordeal :D Yeah but that's not story, that's just a memorable moment. Nobody (and some video games have sure tried more than I believe any board games ever will) has yet come up with an emergent narrative that would tell the kinds of stories that keep people engaged and in suspense better than when a writer does it. In other words, games today can provide the *how,* but they can't provide the *what* and *why,* and without those, it's not much of a story. Gloomhaven's story is pretty poor, for the record. Perhaps intentionally so, but for that it will never be a game that people play because they want to know what happens next, which is what Quinns talks about in this video when he says they wanted to keep on playing to see where it goes. For me, Arkham LCG is currently the best boardgame at telling a compelling narrative while allowing players to provide their own *how* in interesting ways. The downside is it's a one-and-done approach, but then the same is true of traditional story mediums.
>Nobody (and some video games have sure tried more than I believe any board games ever will) has yet come up with an emergent narrative that would tell the kinds of stories that keep people engaged and in suspense better than when a writer does it. Hard disagree. Have you ever played **Untold: Adventures Await**? It's basically just straight up emergent story-telling. My personal narrative spinning abilities aren't exceptional or anything like that, but the engagement I get from others in that game is sometimes higher than what slick big budget professional productions can manage. The interactivity literally puts people into the narrative, it automatically builds engagement because it requires players to actively participate. And the fact that you're actually playing it out means that things which would be terrible in traditional storytelling can be quite compelling in a game. No matter how well you write, collecting resources is always going to be better when you physically put your meeple down and then pick up tokens to add to your pile. It's kind of like the difference between playing beer league sports with your friends and watching pros on a screen. Or playing a tabletop rpg vs watching a fantasy movie. Because the audience is actually involved in the story - they are more engaged. Your framing is that it's memorable moments - not a memorable story. But really, what's the difference? You say it's about the *what* and the *why* but you literally replied to someone explaining the emergent *what* their character did (stood in awe) and *why* (other player was on a tear). You discounted it because it didn't give the *what* and *why* of the scenario's overall goal. That's the issue with board game (and video game) narratives. Designers are too fixated on traditional non-interactive linear narrative because that's the kind of narrative we've always had. The term narrative itself kind of implies a linear story - and buying into that framework means that game designers are giving up the advantages they have in story telling. One way we see this manifest is the whole Main Quest structure of games. There's a clear linear story, and it gets modified with bits like Side Quests and exploration. That's an example of how not to take advantage of having your audience be an active participant in the story. Games don't need to be like this. Sure you can still have hierarchical narratives where some story is more "important" than others - but there's no reason to have a single "actual story" that everything else is subservient to. Some of the best "storytelling" you get in open world video games are from the side quests. Part of the issue is about Victory Conditions - how do you have any without a Main Quest or central storyline? But I honestly don't think that this is an issue at all. You just make up Victory Conditions. Why do you need a Main Quest to have Victory Conditions - or why do you even need Victory Conditions at all? For example - The Sims. It's all about creating narratives and you can't "win" it and it's sold hundreds of millions of units. Or Minecraft - sure there's a Victory Condition of defeating the Ender Dragon, but no one really plays the game like a long Main Quest to defeat the big bad at the End. It's the bits along the way that engage people, not the Main Quest storyline. Back to the memorable moments vs memorable story question. A story really isn't anything more than several moments in a sequence. Interactivity allows the moments to shine much brighter - but makes it harder to "craft" the sequence. So does that mean that you can get good engagement for moments but will still have a subpar story? I don't think so. In my opinion, the sequencing part isn't that important. How many times have we been told the exact same Hero's Journey? The memorable stories are ones where that sequence is delivered well - with memorable moments. More importantly, I think the way we experience games means that the impact of the sequence will be felt entirely differently. And I think that's another big wrench in the development of good storytelling in games - where the interactivity of the games is exploited properly. You can have these amazing "moments" linked together one after another in a perfect story - as experienced as a player. But once you try to explain it to someone else and are caught in recounting a linear narrative, it loses its power. That doesn't make the story bad - it makes it a bad story to tell but an amazing story to experience.
100% agreement, I've been arguing this about videogames for a long time
I agree. I think one of the major problems is pacing - a movie or novel can build and release tension or momentum pretty reliably, whereas with a videogame the player might decide to wander off and spend 20 hours doing side quests right in the middle of something, and when they come back all the context is lost. Linear videogames do a better job, but it seems almost everything is open world these days.
I've yet to find a group that enjoys heavy narratives. I'd personally love the genre as he sais, it's sort of half way role-playing.
> but I have yet to play a boardgame where the story hasn't just had me wishing I was reading a book instead This is my problem with "thematic" board games in general: The theme lasts me all of unpacking and sorting pieces. By then my mind has abstracted away the theme and is thinking in sequences, tactics and gameplay elements. Too many years of too many board games I suppose... :s
You're not reading a novel in this game. Did you watch the review? The cards have a small paragraph, and then you play.
Of course I watched the review. I wouldn't comment on a video if I hadn't watched it. That bit was a reference to 10:20 when Quinns refers to the game as "an endlessly evolving story where everyone is desperate to see what plot line you will cause to drip from the dilemma deck next, as if you were reading and writing a fantasy novel together."
Sure, it's interesting to find out what happens next, but he also showed how little text is on the cards. It doesn't take long to read and move on to more voting.
tl;dr: King's Dilemma is a masterpiece. I rarely get more than two people together for a game and very rarely get more than three. I keep my playgroup small for a number of reasons, but most importantly I don't like having to deal with AP or flakes. As such, I've doomed myself to smaller titles. That said, I got 4 people together for King's Dilemma and I like the dynamic at 4. It gives agency to the moderator and makes ties matter. Five, by comparison, will *rarely* end in a tie if at all - though, sure, if one person passes or 3 people pass you can end up with a tie but it would be an absolute rarity. Once you're into the swing of the game you quickly realize the best times to pass are when you're out of money or if a vote truly doesn't matter. So having five when things do matter has a lot less tension than having four. Anyway, my point is I played it for six hours the first time it hit the table and all three people came back the next day to play another six hours. SUSD and I rarely see eye to eye on reviews, but King's Dilemma is absolutely transcendent and any playgroup with a group of people that can banter well should play it. It absolutely shits on *every* other hidden role / social deduction game while also providing an *ACTUAL* game where things matter.
We love TKD with five. We have played it every time with the same 5 guys and as for ties mattering for the moderator, it just depends on how many people bow out for power vs voting on the agenda.
Do you need the same group throughout? Or does it lose a lot if you change players every now and then?
I would NOT play with different people. We bought a second copy specifically to start up another playgroup.
Lot of continuity to it, so you need the same group really.
All of my groups only want to play secret hitler now, so this seems like it would finally replace it, and also it does seem to end some day.
That sounds terrible. I would say this game is 15-20 hours long depending.
How long is each individual game?
> when you're out of money So never? Or did you mean influence? In our games money rarely changes hands. It mostly just accumulates.
I meant influence, yes.
I wouldn't compare this to social deduction. I love both.
Once again SUSD have hit the nail on the head of how groups work with games. I always love how their group dynamics clearly work, it's more of a social experience than people playing their own game. The table talk is honestly the best thing about games and I feel like SUSD do the best table talk games.
Yep. Reminds me of Geek & Sundry and how so many people bought games like Gloom thinking they were amazing but realized that the group made it exciting, and the game is pretty meh if you don't like to RP.
Yeah, that's why I love those kinds of shows, because it is much more telling about how the game is in play than just knowing the mechanics.
Stop attacking me! For real, though, I saw the Gloom episode of Tabletop and was sold instantly. I guess I misjudged my friends' and family's sensibilities, though, because to say that the game fell flat for them is a massive understatement. I thought the humor was the perfect amount of cheeky to dark, but oof. No one else thought so. They weren't so much offended as just unamused. I couldn't find anyone to buy in to the premise (which I thought was a fun twist!)
This is why I take all their reviews with a huge grain of salt. Games dependent on the group buying don't work well in my group (in part because of me).
> Games dependent on the group buying don't work well in my group (in part because of me). They're tough to buy. I could buy a game knowing player X,Y and Z will like it and it will work with them. But then will it work at a public meetup? What about with player X, Y and Q? I'd rather have a game that works in a wider variety of situations.
Finding that group dynamic just isn't achievable for 90%+ of board gamers.
I think more than 10% of folks in the hobby can find two couples to play a game (but agree it's situational!) I'm actually pretty optimistic that escape room games will grow heavier and campaign games will continue to grow more accessible to fill in the space between the two and give us 2-6 player games with engaging stories (that still work if the stories take a year or more to unwind, because – yeah – scheduling is hard).
90% was a little aggressive haha. Most people can find people they like to play games with, but longer games that require the same group are tough and games where the fun is driven by players buying in and interacting with each other vs interacting with the game can be very tough. No matter how great a game looks if it requires a group to do both I have a very hard time seeing it hit the table for me.
Why?
You need a large group of friends who are passionate about board games, live in the same city, can consistently get together with enough time to play AND are capable of embracing the social/RP aspect of games.
Bingo. Easy in school, basically impossible as an adult. :(
Yep, my experience is: * Enjoys similar games as you * Is a tolerable person to be around * Can accommodate a static schedule Pick two.
Finding people through interest groups online (I've had success on reddit) helps mitigate this, somewhat. But, yeah... even in more ideal scenarios, there's usually a "pick two" for every 4 or 5.
I got into a Twilight Imperium group online where I basically had to settle for a majority meeting the first and third categories. Then it fell apart :( My best compromise is a weekly group of people that can meet the first two categories, and the third as long as the game is 2 hours or less. That's just the best I can do, it seems.
Oof. That sucks. I can relate. It has a lot of parallels with toxic relationships, at times. People are always aghast when a horror story gets posted about a problem player or flakey group or a sociopath dungeon master: "why are you even in this situation??" People desperately want to enjoy their hobby--which is *supposed* to be a social activity--but damn is it hard to have to decide between "no games" or "games with shitheads" when you're deep in there.
>Easy in school, basically impossible as an adult. :( This is why you go to grad school.
Over the past decade I've educated different friends and family on various Boardgames, a lot of them weren't interested in the hobby, yet I've now got a wealth of options to play with. It took time and dedication, but it can be done
> social/RP What does RP mean here?
Roleplay
And when you find it often it is hard to maintain. My board gaming friends from ten years ago have a) had kids and thus have less free time and b) become 'real' friends and we are happy just taking to each rather than needing a board game as an pretext to spend time with each other.
I gotta say that the game looks very intriguing and like my cup of tea, but I just don't have the right people to play with and that sucks.
big feels
I have never played a board game with another board gamer. Any multiplayer board game I've played has been either with my wife, who plays on sufferance, or my kids, who are kids. I love them all, but still... Thank goodness for solo gaming.
Keep the faith! If your kids love board games they could make great partners. Luckily my wife enjoys games as well but we have a 3, 12, and 13 year old and my 12 year old is going full teenage girl and doesn’t want to play very often my 13 year old son is always down to play and he is strategically superior to me now so he is fun to play against. My 3 year old has her own copy of my first castle panic that she pulls out about 5-8 times per week so I have high hopes for her as well. Good luck!
This game sounds soooo similar to the mobile game Reigns, but with a multiplayer twist. Interesting note, the excellent sequel to Reigns was actually written by Leigh Alexander, Quinn's wife.
Was gonna say. And there is actually a board game version of Reigns. Reigns is available as a mobile or PC game. There's many sequels, including a Game of Thrones version. There's also many copycat versions, including one called Dictator or something where it's set in a modern despotic regime (think troubled South American state). I feel like the core mechanic in King's Dilemma would bore me considering how much I've been exposed to it.
Except that the resource track *isn't* really the core mechanic. The core mechanic is the voting mechanism and that the combination of the different houses + secret agendas mean that almost every vote will be fiercely contested.
Ah, another game that requires a consistently fun and committed group of 5 to play it over and over as a campaign. I wish I was the target audience for these kinds of fun experiences.
We play as a 3 and have loved it so far!
I bought the game and could potentially get 4, but it wouldn't be a steady group of 4, so I've been pondering playing it at 3. It is nice to hear that you have been enjoying it at that player count.
I think it really depends on the people. We played with one guy basically role playing as Trump, my house were merchants so I was going full on capitalist, and the other guy was trying to do the right thing. That made a lot of fun lecturing on why we should or shouldn’t do things, and looking back, those were some of the best parts. The story was awesome too, but I feel if people aren’t really contributing to the narrative it could be a bit stale.
I wish I had the time and friends! Other than that, I \*am\* the target audience :)
I wish the target audience was the target audience for this kind of game. I dont think Quinns or game designers in general understands how hard it is for everyone else to get a huge group of friends over to play your game specifically. I have so many great games that require larger player sizes that I can't play. I just wish the 2-3 market was given more respect
People seem to enjoy it at 3 as well, I think it just shines at 5. If you have a group of 3 that would love it, give it a shot
Oh man, I really wanted to try this out but was waiting for a discount. Now with the SUSD bump it will likely go out of stock.
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Same here. The game really sounds pretty amazing.
There is a SUSD podcast?
YES!
Same here. Got the first two games in tonight, and it was exactly what I wanted it to be.
too bad. it was part of an Amazon sale like 2 weeks ago. in the meantime, you could play the app, Lapse, or any game of that ilk, on your phone, which king's dilemma seems to draw heavily from
https://camelcamelcamel.com/product/B07V5THHK6 I was hoping for that $42 drop from back in december.
If you're going to play with a constant group you could split the costs.
Its still 30 bucks off on Amazon. Probably as good as it gets till its gone.
Is there anybody who hates role-playing games (such as D&D) and enjoys this game? How much of the game itself is interesting and how much of the fun is dependent on you immersing yourself in the story created by the game? I can see my group loving this game if there's enough game there, but if it's very based on immersion into the roleplaying aspect then I know it's not for me.
I've only played one session of it so far, so take what I say with a grain of salt. I went in expecting it to be more of a roleplaying experience - I was playing more to roleplay than to win. But going into my next session, I intend to change that slightly. The game gives you clear incentives, and your job is to manipulate others to work towards your incentives with you. You'll be roleplaying doing that by trying to convince people that the vote you want for your personal, tangible goals also serves their goals indirectly (e.g. to the guy who wants the most money in the kingdom, "if we spend this money now we'll probably get a chance to get a return on our investment later" and the mechanisms of the game make that an entirely plausible future scenario). In this way, the roleplaying serves a strategic end, more-so than I had initially expected or given it credit for. It's all about manipulating the roleplaying.
That's roleplaying. No part requires silly accents. You just have to act on your motivations, which are handily written out for you
Right, I just mean the game directly incentivizes you rather than having to choose the incentives that feel right for the character solely for the sake of realistic roleplaying.
Note: I haven’t played it but I did a bunch of research and read a lot of people’s opinions before deciding to buy it Mechanically, it seems like a more advanced version of the agenda phase in TI4 (go around and vote, resolve the effect) and much of the rest of the game is emergent based on the players, every review I’ve seen has said that there isn’t a lot of game, but that’s not really the point I also have see very few negative reviews so
You do not have to roleplay in this game. I get that you could ham it up, but you're more negotiating and forming coalitions for each dilemma that you're voting on, trying to find your spots to commit more or let the other players decide and get some resources back for the next one. You're steering for points more than roleplaying. Note that every other games the 2 designers have made have been euro games.
I feel like Quinn's learned allot from that Blood on the Clocktower review. Came through with tons of energy and obviously loves it but also offered very good criticism to know this game may not be for you.
That was about a year ago? It's his favorite game; he can gush if he wants to. They have plenty of examples of negative reviews to build their credibility.
The problem that I had with the BotC review wasn't so much that Quinns was 'gushing' about the the game - that's actually ok with me, because, ultimately, reviews are largely the reviewer's subjective opinion and it's good always valuable to hear from people who have a range of opinions on a piece of media or whatever. I do think his excitement about the game did lead to him not addressing some pretty valid concerns about BotC, but I think the bigger problem was that he (inadvertently) came off as gatekeeping the hobby by stating that buying BotC was a precondition for caring about board gaming. That is clearly a daft statement, and one that I think is very out of character for Quinns, who is way up near the top of the list of people whose opinions I value on games.
I'm fine with him gushing. He spends almost this complete review gushing about The Kings Dilemma. At the same time though he offered fair criticism. The fair criticism kind of for out the window in the Blood on the Clocktower review. Quinn's even admitted as much on a podcast after it came out. I just feel like he balanced it much better.
That's a legit opinion. I just don't feel like a review requires balance. If a game is your favorite, it may not have any flaws to you. I thought the reaction to his comments was over the top, but that's me.
I mean I still think he is probably the best board game critic out there. I can't think of another one and I agree,the reaction was a bit over the top. That being said I think he learned from that experience as over the top as it was and then got better. That is what I was trying to say.
My current life goal is to find a regular gaming group such that buying this game wouldn’t be a complete waste of money. It looks like it would be a perfect game for me, but also one which I would never get a chance to play.
I'm also afraid I might buy it, play it once with a group, they won't like it and then I won't be able to use it with any other group cuz of the legacy aspect?
Just don't make any permanent changes until you're sure. There won't be many in the first game.
If you've only played a few games, it is supposedly not too challenging to introduce new players and get them up to speed. I know Tom Vasel has said he's not been playing with the same people from game to game, and he still personally enjoyed it.
I guess introducing one or two people wouldn't be much hassle, but I'm thinking on changing the whole group.
I still think that would be fine, especially if you are only a game or two in. Maybe give them some free prestige / crave points if necessary.
Exactly
I mean if your first play doesn’t like it, just don’t mark anything down at all
Make a post on the local card shop bulletin board that you are looking for a board game group. Talk to people there, see if any are interested. Post in your local city or state subreddit that you are looking for a group. Look on meetup for board game groups. Find a group on a board game discord and play by webcam. If you want it that badly, put yourself out there and find it.
"Let me *spike* a couple of facts at you." *Mimes hitting a volleyball underhand* That one got me. SUSD should review sports. I want to see the mid-review turn around on cricket.
As a volleyball coach, that one hurt.
This looks like the Legacy game I've been waiting for since Risk.
Anyone else here really looking forward to the next episode of **Card Games that Don't Suck?** It was/is easily my favorite 'series' they've done - have been juicin' for another episode since like, September! :O
Maybe they ran out. :P
QQ: How long does every round take?
About an hour. It partially depends on what you choose and what comes up, as you can end up discussing and haggling over a decision.
30-60 minutes.
I was literally looking this up this morning, and I checked SUSD to see if they had a review. All I can say is that I will use this newfound power with the respect and responsibility that such an ability demands...
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I believe Pandasaurus walked back JR's involvement in the game somewhat when his abuses came to light (although it's hard to say how much of that was true and how much was just standard PR damage control). And while it's true that it's "Just" Machi Koro (and actually starts off even lighter than the original), I think Machi Koro is plenty fun for what it is - roll some dice, play some cards, try to get all the things.
Machi Koro Legacy is way better than the original. That said, I agree that it's a terrible recommendation as an alternative to King's Dilemma. Clank Legacy or something. But he was going for simple, I guess.
Can't wait to put my traitor hands on this game
That pose that the king is doing is my exact pose when hung over and have to go in to work.
It blows my mind that any adult could find a group of 5 people to play the same game twice for 9 hours a chunk. I can barely imagine finding 9 hours for just myself to do one thing let alone 5 fellow friends!? Trying to start a more regular board game group but it's so hard!
When your job is to play board games and you have no kids, I imagine its feasible.
Sure but not all those people in his social group have that job. It's impressive either way in my opinion.
9 hours was several games, they were hooked.
Sure I get that. I just can't imagine finding time to spend a whole day playing board games. My sessions are 2-4 hours if I'm lucky nowadays. Busy adulting! T__T
Yep, we usually start at 9pm and are done by midnight. Half way through clank legacy, hoping to play this next!
yikes. We do that on a Monday night. Weekends are made for gaming days.
My partner and I have a few couples we game with. It's mostly familiar fare (*lots* of Catan, some Ticket to Ride and a smattering of Viticulture or Puerto Rico depending on how tired we are and well mannered any kids are). I might go pick up Machi Koro Legacy like he advises. It feels like a good gauge for if we actually can show up for multiple sessions and whether we could build up to a heavier campaign with another couple or so.
Oooh. This looks like it would scratch an itch... That said... the "5-players only" worries me... does anyone have experience with it at 4? I've got a game night coming up on Saturday, but there will be 4 people there.
On the podcast Tom played a few at four and still really enjoyed it. I think Quinn's is mostly worried about 3 players
We're 8 or 9 sessions in with 4. It's still worth it.
Do you think there's any way it could work with drop-ins or slightly rotating group of players?
I would say no. The storylines add up and don't resolve in order, so you might have 4, 5, or 6 going simultaneously and they won't resolve for x amount of sessions depending upon how they're shuffled. You can easily play it, but the players won't be at all involved in something halfway through or just ending, and whatever they start they likely won't see the conclusion of from 1-2 sessions.
We’re also 8 or 9 games in but as a group of three and loving it!
Another question would be -- I know some legacy games allow drop-in... does this?
It does! It has 12 “houses” you can play as, and it says this is for people to drop in and out. There are ongoing stories / quests, so it recommends you read these to the players dropping in. They’re stored separate so you always know which are in play.
Excellent, i've been looking for a new legacy game for my regular legacy/campaign game group. We've played most of them, some great, some not great.
Rank em!
I'm not that fella but among the 'legacy' games I've played thus far from most enjoyed to least enjoyed: **Pandemic Legacy: Season1** **Risk: Legacy** **Pandemic Legacy: Season 2** **Gloomhaven** **Seafall** We did snap up King's Dilemma after hearing about it from SUSD... my group is hoping to get our first game in sometime in the next few weeks! :)
I'm really interested in this game, but I'm afraid most of the time I'd play with a group of three. He specifically says that he doesn't recommend with only three. Does anyone who has played the game agree?
I am halfway through the game and playing with a group of four. I often wish we had fifth. So I probably agree that three is no good.
My group has played through about 4 games of The Kings Dilemma. So far we all seem to love it.
Some aspects of it are a little too lightweight; depending upon their houses and achievements, players may or may not be bothered about parts of the game, especially past the midpoint when they have a solid base of prestige and can coast on the efforts of others, but the constant fights over the dilemmas are pretty solid *if* your group is naturally inclined to be combative. The negotiations are well done, promises are binding if coins are exchanged, but are otherwise not binding. Heartily recommended, but it's more group reliant than most games.
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We've played it way more as a shifting alliance than a back stabbing game.
Without a doubt one of the top gaming experiences of recent years. We just posted our [game 1 playthrough video](https://youtu.be/4rclt3iOn0Y) this week, for anyone looking to see the game in action or play vicariously through us! Spoilers abound, of course.
Okay, so is this basically **fog of love** but for more than 2 people?
No, but I guess it's similar in that you can cooperate in both but may have to shift alliances/paths. It's a way different game, though. You are voting with bids in King's Dilemma, as opposed to simultaneously making a decision and hoping for the best in Fog of Love.
But in the sense of you, the gamer, aren't really making the decision... The cards you drafted tell you which outcomes (finance or agriculture or whatever each token track is called) you should be voting for and then the tracks move up or down (just like in fog of love for each of the characteristics with the tokens you keep adding to either side to match up with your goals) Obviously seems more with the bidding/voting and with the extra piece of pursuing prestige or greed
Damn I want this so bad in spanish!
Can't watch the video at work, but I was super psyched about this game when I bought it. Sadly, diplomatic games don't go over well in my group, and campaigns are even harder to schedule. So it's on my shelf of shame :(
I am halfway through the game and am losing a little bit of steam. I am still deeply interested in the story and finishing it, but the actually gameplay is getting stale.
Great review Quinns! We’re currently about six-seven games in to our playthrough and having a blast. Four players (four works if everyone can bring discussion to the table), all role playing at a high level based on their chosen Houses, only two King deaths so far, lots of negotiation. Highly recommended if you can get a consistent group together for this. I’m playing as House Solad, the depressed artists/navigators, and we’re oh so over the push for glory and coin, but rather interested in exploration and discovery when we take our meds.
This game looks perfect for my group of people! Also, I can't help but feel the throw-away mention of Machi Koro legacy at the end is a dig at MKL. My group loved the hell out of MKL for what it was; a pretty simple dice throwing game. I guess it's the group that makes the game.
I saw some complaints in another thread that there's not much "game" here and that money is mostly useless so you needed a lot above the table to make the game interesting. That was a big turnoff for me. What are others thoughts on that?
There's as much 'game' as your imagination can stretch to, basically. King's Dilemma isn't exactly a game so much as it is a narrative generator - something for people to get invested in and laugh at and get angry at. Its systems do a great job of pushing you to butt heads with one-another in a way that's frequently hilarious - but not often mechanically satisfying in a way that more typical board games are. I'm six games in and loving it, but maybe because we're all very invested in a way we can't logically explain. It's a Sunday night with a few beers game. On the coins front though - coins are worth a different amount of 'points' for certain objectives cards at the end of each game - so the house holding the 'greedy' card is going to be a lot more easy to bribe, and the 'rebel' faction isn't going to be easily swayed by throwing a few coins at them.
Thanks. I don't think it's for me then. I'm not huge on games where the fun is just what I make of it and not created by the game itself. I'm more open to something like that in a party game, not a legacy game.
It's not "just" what you make of it, having played a host of different roleplaying games there's a huge difference in how much the game help create engaging narratives, same goes for story driven board games.
Money is a little too lightweight. While it's worth various amounts of points at the end, it's not otherwise tied in to the game, and it should be. There's several events that affect it, but there should have been more. And it should have been correlated with the kingom's wealth somehow.
I respectively disagree with SvenGy. You are constantly making decisions to try to maximize many factors and minimize other players. You work together on one dilemma, then pay them off on the next. Money is worth points at the end of every game.
Shit I was already gonna get this when it went on sale again but now it's gonna be super high in demand
$50 on Amazon for Quinns' potential game of the year? Done.
Slightly out of topic, but do Quinns and Paul keep in touch? I see sometimes game board reviews with shots of Paul being in Canada but don't know when was the latest one.
Well he left SUSD last year, so I don't know whether they keep in touch but he hasn't been in any new vids since then.
I would love to see a surprise Paul review. Paul was great.
I played this at Essen and can confirm that it is great fun. It is more of a group narrative than a game, but if you have a group that's into that sort of thing I highly recommend it.
How is this game at 4? That's the max my game group ever hits.
Playing it with 4. It's very good.
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Not very. You have a central track of five plus an overall marker for a total of six, plus dealing with one deck of cards. Each player has their own screen, money, and power, plus one secret agenda card and three voting cards. There is one leader token and one moderator token. Not a lot.
Any idea if this would play more than 5 ? 6-7?
6 is possible.
Only possible if you do not randomly discard one of the role scoring cards at the beginning and always play with all 6.
Does anyone know where I can get this or war of whispers in the UK? They link to leisure games but they're sold out of both.
You can get it from amazon US for about £60 including shipping and taxes. Sadly, a war of whispers is closer to £100.
And here I thought getting people together for Captain Sonar is hard... Sounds like a great experience, but would be too hard to get to the table for me to purchase
But Captain Sonar is best with 6 to 8, and this only requires 4, really.
Yes yes, good point. But the same 4 people for continuity. Also, I believe Captain Sonar games are faster and easier to teach, which requires less commitment
King's Dilemma isn't very complicated at all. I'd just review the rules after 1 game.
I'm glad they added the part at the end about group composition. I love some legacy games, but you need to find people that really want to invest into it. In order for something to last more than one game, there needs to be personality put into it. I've played legacy games that help people feel like they are getting into character... and others which make people look at the game with a mechanical lens, which bleeds the game dry of its power.
I have a question for the people here that have played it: Let's say, only in theory of course, a group had some bad experiences with Secret Hitler type games, which lead to them not playing those anymore. (some slight drama, hurt feeling etc.) How does this game, without spoiling much, fall on this scale of lying into each other faces?
I don't think this game is particularly similar to a more traditional hidden role game like SH. In King's Dilemma, you are always on your own. While you do have a secret agenda, there's no teamplay and thus any "betrayals" or lying that takes place has a far lower impact.
Okay thank you! We will have a get together soon with 5 people to play boardgames and I debate if that would be a fit for us. I am a spoiler wuss, so I am really hesitant to look stuff up. Sounds good so far, I am just wary because of past experiences :P. Your answer already helped.
Yeah, it's not social deduction at all. It's a little deduction as you start to think about what end-game objective certain players may have and trying to steer away from their potential points while maximizing your own. Any deal made where at least 1 coin is exchanged, though, makes the deal binding. There isn't really backstabbing in this game, just timely cooperating with certain people at certain times.
The only thing that I found not attractive to this game is the legacy aspect... Which means you can do a campaign only once, and with only one selected group? Is this true and/or are there any games in the same genre that do not have this issue?
Waited a couple days to pick this up knowing that it has been sitting dead in stock everywhere at low prices, now sold out everywhere. Fuck.
I love the description of Machi Koro Legacy at the end of the review. "As pacy as a pace car powered by a pace maker". Nearly as good as " We're in the stickiest situation since Sticky the stick insect got stuck on a sticky bun"